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CEO Jack Altman’s email to Lattice employees
- pengaru 4y agoTL;DR (or didn't click): "We’re going to reorganize the company and part ways with around 15% of our teammates"
- Raed667 4y ago"I take full responsibility" /s
- sokoloff 4y agoNB: that is not a quote from the email/article. (It's a reference to other CEOs who said that, but is not in this one.)
- threadweaver34 4y agoI wish companies would report their CEO's internal performance reviews this year. I suspect it'll be framed as making the best out of a bad situation rather than severely misjudged macroeconomic conditions.
- smt88 4y agoI mean, would you prefer they blamed someone else? The C suite and the Board are ultimately responsible for over-hiring and layoffs.
- Raed667 4y agoI prefer that the word responsibility actually meant something.
- notyourday 4y ago> I mean, would you prefer they blamed someone else? The C suite and the Board are ultimately responsible for over-hiring and layoffs. Board should automatically reduce CEO pay to $1.00 for the current and the next year every time a CEO "takes responsibility".
- rchaud 4y agoIt's a nice thought but this would send companies hurtling towards IPOs even faster than they are already doing, and using even more tricks to pump the stock.
- AlexTWithBeard 4y agoThey will have lots of problems trying to hire the next CEO then.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- stefan_ 4y agoLattice the "People Success Platform", not the semiconductor company and maker of FPGAs that has actually turned a profit
- Johnny555 4y agoIt’s a little more nuanced, “we were drunk on cheap money and over hired, just like everyone else with the belief growth would continue” As interest rates plummeted to 0% and monetary policy pushed lots of money into the economy, companies had easy access to capital, and demand for products and services surged. Organizations hired aggressively to meet market demand and the war for talent reached a fever pitch. The result, for Lattice, was that growth skyrocketed. Which is a reasonable thing to do, it probably takes 6 months to a year to get many employees up to full potential. So over hiring during growth makes sense, if you under hire, you’ll never catch up.
- musk_micropenis 4y ago[dead]
- ydnaclementine 4y agoI'm sure there's a joke somewhere about company goals and hitting OKRs
- trynewideas 4y ago"Latticians"
- optimalsolver 4y agoMy favorite Star Trek alien race.
- jordanmorgan10 4y agoI came here to say the same haha
- scifibestfi 4y agoWelcome Latticians. You join the Googlers, Xooglers, Nooglers, Metamates, Amazonians, Stripes, Tweeps, Peeps, Veeps, Rackers, Krakenites and Plaids.
- trynewideas 4y agoand Flexporters, Scaliens, Relativians, Swyftxers, Elasticians, Dragons, Asanas, Wistians, Birds, Twilions, Pitchers, Olivians, Snykers, Pandas, Astronauts, Superhumans, VTEXers, Klarnauts, Lacers, Mozillians, Paddlers, Oysters, SoundHounders, Vimeans, Zoopligans, Motives, Stashers, Plerkers, Lokalisers, Courserians, and Udacians.
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago15% force layoff: - 12 weeks pay, more for longer tenure - /wrong info deleted/ 3 years to exercise (Corrected: Removal of vesting cliff, not full vesting) - healthcare for 3 months - get to keep laptop equipment - up to 100k investment if the laid off employee does their own startup, using Lattice for HR purposes
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoI wonder what the startup scene will be like with all these layoffs. I know a few people in the past who got together and started their own company after being laid off, using their severance as a runway.
- jacquesm 4y agoIn other news, all Lattice employees fire themselves and pocket 100K. That seems gamable unless they want to weasel on the 'up to'. It also is a bit strange to combine 'layoff' and 'investment' in the same email, it's a layoff, any sugarcoating should be in cash and not in possible investments.
- romellem 4y agoThe 100k investment (something they announced in Feb 2020) isn't an instant check for 100k, there are several conditions, [details here][1], and the relevant part being: > The way it works is simple: if you’ve worked at Lattice for at least 3 years and part on amicable terms and if you start a new company within 12 months of leaving, Lattice will offer to invest up to $100,000 either at a $5 million valuation or at the terms of a seed round you are raising, whichever is higher. Lattice will look to support these companies through sharing advice, our network, and even partnership where applicable. [1]: https://lattice.com/blog/lattice-announces-the-invest-in-your-people-fund https://lattice.com/blog/lattice-announces-the-invest-in-you...
- efsavage 4y agoI feel that some version of that is not a bad standing policy for any company.
- sokoloff 4y ago12 weeks minimum severance (with paid healthcare), no cliff on vesting, 3 years to exercise, still eligible for the startup investment. Those sound like fairly generous terms to me.
- UncleMeat 4y agoYeah as much as I'm sick of what seems to be bandwagoning around layoffs, I'm happy to see bandwagoning around very good severance packages.
- pyb 4y agoWho gave tech CEOs permission to blame their mistakes of the past 2 years on ZIRP ? This has become a kind of meme. The problem is, ZIRP has been the reality, on and off (mostly on), since 2008.
- notinfuriated 4y agoDo you need permission to shift the blame for your own poor planning? As far as they're concerned, this was all played out just fine, they needed the headcount in case they could grow more, and if things changed, they can always lay off 15% of the workforce. I'll add the implicit statement to their note on ZIRP myself (in italics): > Starting in the middle of 2020, the world moved in an unprecedented environment for many companies. As interest rates plummeted to 0% and monetary policy pushed lots of money into the economy, companies had easy access to capital, and demand for products and services surged. Organizations hired aggressively to meet market demand and the war for talent reached a fever pitch. The result, for Lattice, was that growth skyrocketed. [We either ignorantly assumed it would be like this forever, or knowingly took the risk that we'd have to lay people off when the economic picture meaningfully changed.] > Fast forward a couple of years to 2023, and the economic picture has meaningfully changed. (Aside, anyone else annoyed that so many companies have adopted the term "impacted" as the verb to refer to people who were laid off? The company is experiencing a layoff, an event as a noun, through which coworkers are impacted. Maybe I've only noticed this recently. It rubs me the wrong way, as we're avoiding saying what happened out loud, like the company is absolved from their responsibility as the subject performing the act of firing on the object. That said, the severance here is fairly generous so this isn't a knock on Lattice so much as pervasive SV culture.)
- Apocryphon 4y agoLattice might be an actual instance of a business whose growth was commensurate with demand ("revenue has grown by five times since the start of the pandemic"), but you'd have to imagine that a lot of other tech companies grew for the sake of growth enabled by ZIRP and pandemic hype for tech. There were a lot of valuations based on unrealistic future projections that seemed untethered to reality. Maybe Lattice did the right thing, given the circumstances, but surely not all of the other headcount-exploding companies did. It seems like a copout to blame it all on ZIRP going away and not actual corporate leadership. And yes I understand fiscal environments might compel said leadership to pursue that path, either as a game theory thing or because boards and investors agitate for it. But it still seems wrong to blame it all on the Fed and not bear any responsibility.
- motohagiography 4y agoHaving been through a bunch of tech organizations, this letter is a high watermark for treating people with respect and candour about the business, which is objective thing they share. It goes a long way to positioning people well to manage the change in their own lives. A rare demonstration of ownership, and it helps anyone laid off demonstrate the kind of culture they can bring with them to their new roles. Anyone who worked in the culture that produces that level of ownership will be a valuable asset wherever they go.
- nishs 4y agoIf _this_ is considered a high watermark, that speaks volumes in itself.
- moneywoes 4y agoWow another day another org doing a layoff. Guess I’m not alone in that respect
- aryaonearth 4y ago[flagged]
- Aromasin 4y agoI thought they were talking about Lattice Semiconductor for a good 5 minutes. I figured a hardware company with just over 700 employees was pretty damn lean, and didn't understand why they were downsizing. Turns out no, this a a cloud based HR platform - which made me balk at the fact they had just over 700 employees.
- myself248 4y agoSame. TIL Lattice Semiconductor doesn't own lattice.com, they're latticesemi.com
- nine_k 4y agoA missed opportunity to use semilattice.com %) (But maybe some math nerd had registered it even earlier.)
- reversethread 4y agoSo did I. Keep in mind Lattice Semiconductor is also incredibly lean, with only around 900 employees.
- ntimcan 4y agoWhen Lattice semi produce so much value from 900 staff, and this lattice so little from 700 - the layoffs are needed, clearly.
- __derek__ 4y agoPresumably a lot of that is sales/support. Their customers are start-up HR "departments" (i.e. one or two people who worked as an HR generalist at a bigger company).
- skrtskrt 4y agoWe use Lattice and it’s uh, perfectly fine but has all the functionality of a Django demo project. I’m sure they have to put a lot of employee time into integrations and custom onboarding from other platforms, etc. But its core is literally just text forms to write peer reviews and to organize OKRs
- buggy6257 4y agoSam Altman, Jack Dorsey, Jack Altman... If I see a tech CEO named 'Sam Dorsey' I'm going to assume I'm living in a badly-written simulation.
- Apocryphon 4y agoJack Bankman
- zachthewf 4y agoSam and Jack Altman are brothers
- frellus 4y agoHonestly, any company which leads from the top like this, instead of having HR just ambush people about a "difficult discussion" they need to have, is going to be rated up high to me. Even more so, a company with generous layoff terms -- which these are. No one is at fault here. What's happening in tech and the economy in general might new for some of you, or the first time in your working career that you're worried about your job because, for the past 15 years or so, tech has been largely insulated from other small cycles which have happened. Economies have downturns and cycles, and in your lifetime you'll see it many times. My parents struggled so much in the 80s to put me through school. My dad had to take a job in a different state and live away for 6 months just so we could keep our house and the lights on. I will never forget that time. Or 2001 when so many dot coms busted, as did my first job. Or in 2008 when half my colleagues in finance were walked out the door. Or 2011's mini recession. It gets better, and this all will pass. To me, it certainly makes a difference how people treat each other when times are tough, and I can find no fault of this CEO or company. Nor of Zuckerburg when I read and listened to his message and felt, to me, genuine sadness in having to make such a decision. It's tough times - let's all avoid cynicism and see if we can help anyone we know impacted by a job loss by our networks. Go write up a referral for someone on LinkedIn. Call a friend who's struggling and just listen to them. That's all you can really do.
- sem000 4y agoOne of the best comments on HN ever. Thank you!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bigbacaloa 4y agoDid he cut his own pay?
- Veen 4y agoWhy would he? He's doing the job he's paid to do, which includes managing downsizing when it's appropriate.
- brk 4y agoAt this point these all just seem like they could have been written by ChatGPT.
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y agoEvery single CEO seems to have made the same mistake. I can't believe that they didn't see this coming. My businesses also grew intensely during the pandemic, but if I thought that rate would last, I would have considered myself the stupidest leader on the ground. This is just so short sighted from Jack and other such CEOs.
- lbriner 4y agoI kind of agree but, of course, the elephant in the room is the whole culture that these companies exist in: Raise large amounts of money Grow exponentially Have a sweet exit for the investors Nothing that happened is surprising in this light. Even with a "nice" CEO and generous layoff terms, the simple issue is that the market for any given company can only ever be so big and the CEO doesn't get to choose "less growth" with investors breathing down their necks.
- Apocryphon 4y agoPerhaps now that the tide has gone out, it’s revealed that the entire industry was swimming naked.
- fatnoah 4y ago> ..and the CEO doesn't get to choose "less growth" with investors breathing down their necks. Investors in private and public businesses demand growth, so naturally executives will optimize for that. I'm currently at a Series B company that has a product, growing customer base, strong revenue, etc. and we're starting the Series C process. We've crafted a plan for responsible organic growth by investing in efficiency and growing lines of business with a lower cost to serve, but even in this environment, a significant number of investors are still looking for a "pump in the cash and grow fast" story.
- tschellenbach 4y agoYou could have been really rich trading on that insight in the stock market
- 4y ago
- samstave 4y agoAny relation to Sam Altman?
- jedberg 4y agoJack is his brother.
- samstave 4y agoMr. Reddit, Did you receive, or do you refute nepotistic investments/hires - irrespective of the success/failure of your company? - Reddit has become a site that I will only ever lurk - after having an account for 16 YEARS... I will never create another account... -- Do you see these changes in Reddits favor? Or do you feel that Reddit has lost its vision, vs. supporting the path they are on?
- paxys 4y agoMy company started using Lattice for performance reviews a couple years ago, and everyone initially thought it was some internal tool that someone from HR had quickly put together from a bootstrap template. I then found out that they are a VC-backed company with hundreds of millions in funding and a ~$3B valuation (at least at the start of 2022). We thankfully don't use it anymore, since I assume someone higher up realized that we don't need to pay $25+ per employee per month to send out a feedback form once a year. I normally cringe at all the "I could build it in a weekend" posts here, but with Lattice I genuinely cannot understand what the 1000+ employees even do. Is there anything more to the company than the founder's last name and industry connections through his brother?
- raydiatian 4y agoThis sounds astronomically short sighted. > While our revenue has grown by five times since the start of the pandemic, our costs have grown by even more as we geared up for a continued rate of growth that now looks unlikely. Additionally, so much of our organization was built for a paradigm of rapid growth, in terms of the roles, ratios, and structures we’ve put in place.
- granshaw 4y agoWhat's with all this "you get to keep your laptop" moves... do employees really use their company laptop for everything? Protip: Have your own laptop for your own stuff – it'll save you from all kinds of headache down the line, and shield you from all kinds of potential risk
- MikeKusold 4y agoIt's because they are depreciating assets. If you don't have plans to hire again in the near future, there isn't much of a point in holding on to them.
- dpkirchner 4y agoThey may not use them for everything but the laptops probably don't have much value for the company, not enough to make it worth having them shipped back, cleaned/refurbed, reinstalled, for new employees that may not exist for a while. The way it's framed in the letter is a little odd, but I guess they felt they had to say something other than "they're not worth our time".
- sleepybrett 4y agoCertainly probably costs more in 'helpdesk' time to collect them, make sure the employee returned all their employer supplied chargers, docks, etc and get them reimaged and back into rotation than it would cost to replace. As someone that went through a similar 'just keep it' event. My personal laptop was already better, but my sister's sure as shit wasn't.
- aero142 4y agoHow do these companies ensure that the hard drives get cleared of company data? I would expect most companies handle information that is legally restricted and have an obligation to ensure employees don't keep a stray copy of customer information.
- Apocryphon 4y agoMDM remote wipe
- 0xbadc0de5 4y agoAlternate view: Growing a business to meet customer demands when times are good and contracting it when customer demand wanes is probably more efficient and results in higher employment than structuring your company to weather all storms with no loss of headcount. That said, layoffs suck, particularly for those affected. It seems like this company is communicating and providing a softer landing than most.
- xwowsersx 4y ago"Latticians".. here we fucken go again https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34346860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34346860
- Eumenes 4y agoI was eating leftover pizza and nearly choked on it when I read that
- MangezBien 4y agoAccountability would be the CEOs of these companies stepping down after they've made enough mistakes (both hiring too much and then not reaching growth targets). As usual workers get screwed and management coasts on unaffected.
- throwaway4837 4y agoI worked at Lattice a few years ago, back when it was under 100 people (probably doxxing myself, but whatever). They did a similar layoff right when covid hit. This definitely seems to be Jack's style, owning his decisions and not doing an HR hit-job. This post will work in his favor, no doubt. Glad to see Lattice prioritizing employees -- big fan of the 100k investment idea. Seeing a lot of people shitting on the product in this comment forum. Plenty of their products are gimmicks, sure, but their real product is that they have a cult-following from the HR community, and they are better positioned to iterate and compete with more mainstream HR tools if they play their cards right. Lord knows they have way too many sales people (AKA "surplus elites"), and need to focus more on their product if they want to have something HR teams don't just want, but need, especially in this new macroeconomic condition. Hopefully the company can move on from this quickly. I don't think Jack is the kind of person who will fuck this opportunity up.
- rchaud 4y agoAn email is all it takes to 'own' one's mistake? Wish I could email my priest instead of having to go into the confession booth each time.
- leoh 4y agoDidn’t know we were holding Catholic rites as de rigeur here
- swyx 4y agohave any notable successes emerged from the 100k investment thing yet?
- tempsy 4y agothe fact they raised money at a $3B valuation only a year ago shows how insane the 2021 market was https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/19/lattice-raises-175m-more-at-a-3b-valuation-for-its-people-management-platform/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/19/lattice-raises-175m-more-a... This is the same marketcap as Asana now, which I would guess has much higher revenue figures than Lattice
- nrbernard 4y ago"Today, we thank the shipmates who will be departing." Imagine writing that sentence!
- rchaud 4y agoThe original sentence ended with "walking the plank"
- robhunter 4y agoGreat email from Jack, but I have to wonder about the strike price of any options issued 6-12 months ago - they're likely underwater at this point, and may still be even 3 years from now when the exercise window closes. Not much anything Jack can do (I think?), but I worry there may be individual employees paying out of pocket for equity that is not worth what it was when originally granted.
- mathattack 4y agoId like to see Lattice work on the usability of their product as well. If they don’t fix that the other 85% of the company will lose their jobs too.
- ucm_edge 4y agoA year ago, myself and other Director / Senior EM folks were sitting around in our Zoom, looking at our headcount allocations from C-Suite and talking about how while the company wanted hyper growth, we all needed to find ways to control the growth/not hire as many as the company wanted us to hire, because otherwise we'd end up doing lay offs in 18 to 24 months when the econ cools (turns out we overestimated that bit). Every middle managers saw it, some of the more experienced ones who had gone through this cycle before shared tactics they'd used last time to make it seem like you're playing ball (so Talent doesn't rat you out for blocking their Hire A Bazillion People OKRs), etc. It was a regular topic in our leadership meeting and we all covered for each other when slow hiring got brought up. We ended up hiring 60% of the targeted headcount before interest rates started spiking and everyone else slowed hired before transitioning to layoffs. So now we're the only division in the company that has open lines and can replace attrition. Meanwhile two other divisions have layoff rumors floating around. All these CEO "it's my fault" letters ring hollow with me. The responsible ones were the ones that didn't just hop on all hands and announce "We're gonna 3x headcount!" and instead kept their hiring rational, managing their board and investors as needed. People are getting laid off now, because senior leadership wanted to have nice happy meetings where they pretended we could just 3x revenue every year for every and thus any kind of spend was justified on the grounds revenue would surpass it sooner or later.
- bink 4y agoThis seems like it could turn out to be a disaster if the company decides to do a 10-15% "across the board" cut, as many seem to be doing.
- purpleblue 4y agoI'm glad he didn't say that it was "his responsibility alone" or that he is "holding himself accountable". Those are empty words that were being overused during this last layoff season and it was extremely disingenuous. From my perspective, this was a good layoff email, not flowery and very straightforward.
- gardenhedge 4y agoThere's a "Careers" link at the bottom of the blog post that says "Hiring" on it. Good job Lattice!
- stickyricky 4y agoWill any of the executives who made this error be held accountable? Was anyone fired, salaries reduced, CEOs replaced? It seems like losing 15% of your workforce is a significant error. I've never made a mistake which cost 100+ people their jobs.
- samstave 4y ago>>While our revenue has grown by five times since the start of the pandemic, our costs have grown by even more Soo.... shouldnt mgmt have some culpability here, for poor forcasting and they should be impacted... who was doing their forcasting/finances, how much was the CFO paid - he should be fired first? as a dir of ops for many companies, the CFO is the most remotely connected with the tech ops dev ops reqs required... and I have personally trained several CFOs on their BS... I hold CFOs accountable to their mistakes, yet they suffer zero consequences. If YC wants to brag about their companies - I'd say that holding CFOs accountable would be the most important change they can make. STOP hiring CFOs that dont know shit about tech as it translates to the actual teams who produce. - If I am wrong, then educate me AND the industry in what to expect from a CFO who doesnt understand 'cloud-finance' Get FinOPs to be a bit more salient
- rglover 4y agoDon't know much about them but CEO seems legit. This is a great exit package: Pay: Separation packages offered to affected employees include a minimum of 12 weeks of pay, and more for those with longer tenure. Equity: We removed the vesting cliff for employees who were with Lattice for less than one year. Their equity will vest monthly during their employment term as if they had reached the cliff. Employees will have up to 3 years to exercise their options post-exit. Healthcare & Mental Wellness: We’re covering the cost of healthcare benefit continuation for employees, as well as extending mental health support through Spring Health, for 3 months. Financial Advising: Origin financial wellness support will be available for 3 months to provide Certified Financial Planning and other tools. Career support: We will be providing transitional support services to affected employees, with the costs covered by Lattice. The support includes career coaching, resume and LinkedIn updating, interview coaching, among other personalized services. Laptops: All impacted Latticians may keep their laptops. We recognize that a career transition is not a good time to be without a capable machine. Invest in Your People Fund: The option to have Lattice invest in a new startup will remain available to departing Latticians. If they decide to launch a startup that aligns with Lattice’s investment criteria, they will be eligible for up to a $100K investment from Lattice. Details here.
- samstave 4y agoOK - I am going to shit on the model that Lattice has, as a Human. I AM NOT A RESOURCE to be tracked and measured in the same way as a machine/robot. I dont need dashboards of my performance.... The last company that I was at that employed such measures kept telling my my monthly bonus was $27,000 Then they came back and paid me $2,000 -- and blamed it on the client not paying (even though I made them MILLIONS) (SF) ... yeah ;; Trying to tie an employees to their 'productivity' dashboard, vs value of contribution is BS. The idea of tracking the KPIs and metrics they have make me puke. - If I had a startup currently, it feeds into the metastasizing of HR into companies... Be a human. Never trust HR. Not a robotic company, because if you are ;; you are nothing more than a 'Company Store' and we all know how well those workers did. -- This is nothing about Lattice itself: its about how generally emps are treated regardless (driven by POS companies like McKinsy et al...)
- sangnoir 4y agoQuick question to TA/HR folks[0]: did all companies doing layoffs over-hire by exactly 15% by some magical convergence? Is this copycat behavior, cargo culting or something else? 0. Numerologist may also chime in
- afitnerd 4y ago“Employees will have up to 3 years to exercise their options post-exit.” That’s pretty remarkable, actually